How the Labor Shortage is Affecting Local Construction Efforts

A shortage of construction workers has led to back logs and longer completion times for projects to be finished.

According to the Associated Builders and Contractors, the construction industry needs around 650,000 new workers just to maintain the current workforce.

Director of Construction Technology at Northwestern Michigan College, Dan Goodchild, says everyone needs maintenance work now. However, they don’t have enough employees to take care of them.

“We have a huge crisis really developing where our buildings are falling apart, our electric transmission systems are getting decayed,” Goodchild says.

Trade programs are available in Traverse City at both the high school and college levels. However, Goodchild says it’s not enough.

“Even though at NMC and over at our career tech center we have very good programs that address and can train people in these different instruction skill areas,” Goodchild explained. “We don’t have one big enough or adequate enough to even come close to meeting the need.”

Due to the shortage, Goodchild says construction jobs are taking up to two years longer to complete.

“Everybody would like to have stuff done right now, and unfortunately the waitlist for some of these companies is well into next year. But having a lot of extra people that know how to do the work would easily extradite a lot of that,” Goodchild states.

A teacher at the Career Tech Center in Traverse City, Tim VanderMeulen, says it’s more complicated than that. VanderMeulen states that although they’ve seen an increase in enrollment, that doesn’t mean they’ve found a solution.

“It’s easy to fill entry level positions. The real shortage that they experience are the high-quality and the high-experience people,” VanderMeulen said.

Both construction programs are focused on selling more students on the trades.

“You’re basically looking at going to college tuition free, and having the paycheck coming in while learning a lifelong skill,” Goodchild said.